“Was that Bruce Hanley I saw today?” Mom said when she came down. She wrapped her arms around Dad’s neck and leaned over his shoulder, studying his work. They looked like something I remembered from a long time ago.
“He brought this clock I’ve never worked on before. Amazing workmanship,” Dad said.
“Uncle Troy liked my volcano!” I added.
“Uncle Troy was here?” Mom’s voice tensed as she sat next to Dad. “What did he want?”
Dad didn’t respond. The fluorescent lights buzzed and the clocks ticked.
“Something happen, John?”
“It’s just church business.”
“Church business is our business.”
“It’s about when I’m coming back.”
“Did you have an answer for him?”
“No, I did not,” Dad said shortly. And then there was another gap of only buzzing and ticking.
“Do I have to pull it out of you?”
“It’s about the house and the timing and everything,” Dad said. “Troy’s working on trying to secure a short sabbatical—if we can get another interim. And if the new interim won’t need housing, we can stay here. Maybe through mid-March.”
Mom let out a sigh. But I wasn’t sure whether it was relief.
“And then what?” Why did Mom have to keep asking questions? Wasn’t it enough that we had a little time? “This just delays the inevitable,” Mom said. “All this staying.”
“Renee, you’re going to have to let it go. I can’t go back right now. So just leave it be.”
“Leave it be?” Mom turned his command into a question. “I’m supposed to ignore everything?”
“He also claimed that attendance is down, the budget is suffering, and this interim doesn’t do any visitation,” Dad confessed as if an afterthought.
“Well, you’re just full of good news,” Mom said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “John, nothing’s getting better when you just stay down here with all your clocks. You need to be around people. We need you,” she said. “I need you,” she added softly. Dad set the clock down and really looked at her. Mom continued, “How much time does this buy?”
“I don’t know, Renee. Troy was going to work it out with the session and the presbytery.”
Mom studied him and then said, “There’s something more you’re not telling me.” She sounded suspicious.
Dad’s expression changed to what Mom had once called exasperation.
The cuckoo snapped out from one of Dad’s clocks as if curious what would happen next. Dad pushed back his chair, took the clock off the wall, and shut the trapdoor with such finality I was pretty sure the bird was a prisoner for life.
“There are some contingencies ….” He looked over at me, remembering I was at work in my corner. “They want me to see someone,” he muttered.
“Hey, Abby, Dad and I need to talk,” Mom said. “Do you think you could go upstairs for a while?”
No problem, I thought as I trooped up the stairs yet again. Just keep moving Abby upstairs and downstairs and outside and wherever she can’t hear fighting.
“That’s good, John,” Mom said with more hope. “That’s a good thing, honey.”
But something about it wasn’t a good thing because their voices got louder and louder. I’m sure if I went back downstairs I wouldn’t hear the clocks or the lights, and I would be cowering by my volcano. Where was Matt?
Then something fell, crashing to the floor, and Mom gasped. Was she hurt? Did she cry? I wondered about the volcano I had just finished painting. We hadn’t even gotten to put the chemicals inside and watch it erupt.
I don’t know what was broken, but it didn’t sound like it could be fixed. Irreparable damage. I flung open the door to hear what happened.
“John, something has to change,” Mom whispered.
“I know,” Dad said. “I know.” More silence. “I was wrong. I can’t believe I said those things.” More silence. I breathed slow and quietly, but my heart raced as I waited for something else. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I let myself out the back door. But when I hit the steps, my legs felt tingly and I lost my balance. I couldn’t get my hands out in front of me fast enough and my shoulder and chest took the brunt of my fall, knocking the wind out of me as I fell down the stairs. I lay facedown on the cold cement at the base of the stairs, surprised at how quickly it all happened. I didn’t want to move. Did I break anything? After I brushed off the leaves and dirt, I slipped into the garage and sat in the station wagon to wait out the storm. I ached all over, but you couldn’t see I was injured from the outside.
The next morning, I checked my volcano; it was in one piece, and whatever Dad broke was cleaned up like nothing happened.
Ironically, that Monday, Mrs. Clevenger asked for a progress report on everyone’s science project. Somebody was making a magnet, someone else a sundial; Rita was creating a model solar system. Mrs. Clevenger pulled me aside before lunch to ask how my project was going.
“I haven’t tried blasting it off yet,” I admitted as we walked down to the cafeteria. “But it’s painted and everything.”
“Did Matt help you?” she asked.
“Yes, of course,” I answered, and then worried that maybe he wasn’t supposed to. Besides, how did she guess? Did she know everything about me?
“Good.” She smiled and I smiled back in relief. “Matt loved that project when he was in fourth grade.” As we entered the cafeteria, she inhaled and declared, “Spaghetti.”
“And that means French bread, green salad, and apple crisp,” I added. “It always goes together.”
She had the class sit down and motioned for me to stay by the door. “Like I said, I’m glad Matt helped you.” Her voice trailed off and then she tried again. “But how is everything else?” she asked. “I mean … are things getting better?”
I knew what she meant. She meant Dad and she meant Matt and Mom and maybe even me; and she meant, was our family coming back together? And I thought about the fight last night in the basement. But how could I explain it when I didn’t even know what they were arguing about or what happened or if it even meant anything? There were too many layers of things happening or not happening. This wasn’t a question I could quickly answer and then sit down between Rita and Melody and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The spaces at the fourth grade table were filling up. Pretty soon I’d have to eat with the third graders. I rolled the top of my lunch sack up and down.
“I’ll take that to mean there’s room for improvement,” she said, so knowingly. “I guess I’d better let you go find your seat.” She put her hand on mine. “I’m here if you want to talk. Just remember, sometimes it helps.”
I nodded thanks and escaped to my table.
That evening when Matt walked in the door, I begged him to let me blast my volcano. He dropped his backpack on the kitchen table and paused.
“Get on some old clothes. We’ll blow it up,” he said.
“Can you take it outside?” Mom suggested.
“It’s pretty cold out there, and besides, it’s way too heavy now, Mom. Abby put about five layers of clay on that thing.” Mom sighed and resigned herself to whatever would happen in the basement. Besides, it was really Dad’s shop now.
Matt carried the vinegar and a few Kleenexes, and I brought the dishwashing soap, food dye, and baking soda. It was hard to believe these few ingredients would really blow. When he tugged the string, the overhead bulb lit up the basement steps, revealing my volcano in the far corner. Oh, how I hoped it would work. And I could see Bruce’s clock on the table. From the outside, it looked finished, but I knew better about clocks. It was the inside that counted.
Mom followed close behind with a stack of newspapers she added to the perimeter of my volcano. Then the three of us stood over the creation and awaited Matt’s instructions.
Matt poured two cups of vinegar down the hole, then squeezed a few drops of Palmolive, and finally a few drops of red
food dye. I closed my eyes.
“Abby, nothing happens until I put in the baking soda.”
Matt put a few tablespoons of baking soda in a tissue.
“We’re creating a chemical reaction with acid and a base. It forms a carbon dioxide gas.” He twisted the edges of the tissue into a small packet, like a tea bag. It seemed to come naturally to him, and then I thought about the barn and my stomach felt funny. I deliberately focused on my volcano and his hands and the tissue and how nice my brother was to help me blow it up.
“Are you ready?” he asked. I plugged my ears and he shook his head. “It’s not going to be noisy, but it’ll be messy. Watch,” he said. “Do you want to drop it in?” He handed the tissue to me. I shook my head. I was afraid. “If everything works right, we should be able to do it over and over and you can do it for your class, too,” Matt said, and then dropped the tissue in the top of the volcano.
It took a while but then red bubbles began foaming over the sides. The dishwashing soap had done its job. The foam slid over the mountain and onto the floor. But that was it? Where was the fire? Where was the noise?
“Is that it?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is that all it’s going to do, or will it make some noise or fire?”
“That’s it, Abby,” Matt said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Isn’t there something else we could put inside it?” It seemed like I had spent too many hours for it to just foam like bubble bath.
“I don’t know.” Matt frowned.
“It’s good enough, Abby,” Mom said, as if taking sides with Matt.
“But a volcano is fiery and explosive and this is not,” I argued. “It needs something inside it to burn and blast off.”
“And you think I’m the one to figure that one out?” Matt asked. “Sounds like trouble to me,” he said as he walked up the stairs. Mom glared at me and cocked her head toward Matt, as if cueing me to do something.
“Hey, Matt, thanks,” I said, late. Way too late.
I don’t know why I moaned in my sleep that night. There was something about falling, and the sensation that I wanted out of that nightmare but my eyes felt heavy.
“Abby, wake up. It’s just a dream. Wake up.” Dad’s voice was near and I felt his hands on my shoulders and his whiskers rough against my cheek.
“It’s okay now, honey. It’s just moving pictures. It’s just a movie. Turn it off.” A movie? Hadn’t I used those words? I felt a sudden dampness against my cheek and was surprised I had been crying. But when Dad pressed his unshaven face against mine, I realized the tears were shared.
“That’s better. Now you’re awake.”
“Why does that happen?” I turned on my side, propping myself up on one elbow.
Dad ran his hand over my back and scratched from shoulder to shoulder. It felt so good to feel his touch again.
“I think maybe our day brain has too many thoughts that we don’t know what to do with, and so our night brain tries to work them out. I don’t know. If I did know, I’d stop them. For you. For me.”
“It happens to you, too?” I said.
“I can’t ever make the dream change. I want a different ending,” he answered sadly. I didn’t need to know what he dreamed about. I didn’t even want to know. “I don’t want it to be like this for you,” he said softly.
And I don’t want it to be like this for you either, I thought. Or Matt or Mom. We sat there together in silence for what could have been ten minutes, and then he got up.
“Good night, honey. Sleep tight.” And I wondered if that would ever be possible.
FOURTEEN
The Bethel Springs Presbyterian Christmas pageant was scheduled for Christmas Eve. Christmas was on, though Dad’s involvement was dubious. That was Mom’s new word, whenever I asked if she thought Dad would let us do something. Like when I asked if we could put up the Christmas lights. “Dubious.” Or if we could go to the town’s annual Christmas parade. “Dubious.”
The clear blue-sky days were gone and replaced with gray and cloudy. Though Mom and Dad didn’t string any lights, thankfully the neighbors did. Our house wore its usual white porch lights, but everything felt colorless, as if we now lived in black and white when Christmas should be in color: green like a Christmas tree, red like holly berries. Miss Mary Frances gave me an early Christmas present, Christmas Carols for the Serious Piano Player, and assigned me two new pieces.
Mom always set up a village under our Christmas tree. Each house was made of cardboard and frosted with glitter. Every year since Mom was six, her dad had given her a house or a figurine. Since then, even when it wasn’t Christmas or her birthday, people would come over with a miniature mailbox or a car with a tree on top, or a few carolers.
The village wasn’t unlike Bethel Springs, except that it had one large mountain (not nearly the size of our own Terror Ridge), which began at the living room wall and flowed down to a tinfoil pie plate pond at the bottom. We had skiing and skating all in one perfect little village.
As a preschooler I lay under the tree, moving the pieces around and letting the girl figurines go next door to play with their friends. The Christmas Joel turned two, we thought we’d have to keep the set in boxes. But I pleaded with my mom and promised I’d watch him closely and teach him a reverence for the pieces.
We lay on our stomachs and I told Joel to lie on his hands until I was ready to hand him a piece. Joel dutifully obeyed. I told him the name of each person so there would be no confusion in future play; I was going to remain mayor of all village activity. And so, except for a mailbox that he accidentally sat on while I gave my demonstration (which I subsequently glued back together before my mom noticed), Joel shared my respect for our Christmas village. Would Mom set it up this year?
Mom usually shopped sales all year long and hid our presents in the hope chest in her bedroom. The hope chest seemed an appropriate hiding place for the things I longed for. Since no one at our house believed someone was coming down the chimney, there’d be no Santa this year. All reason for childishness left with the child. This December Mom even asked me to help her wrap all the Christmas presents, except mine.
As Mom retrieved the gifts, I calculated paper size and ribbon. She carefully laid aside the ones I wasn’t supposed to see. And when she got to the bottom, Mom slowly pulled out a book and what appeared to be a flannel pillow. The book was Curious George Rides a Bike. She hesitated, as if she wanted to read it, but instead set it on her lap and smoothed the back of her hand across what I recognized as pajamas decorated with monkeys. I longed to press the soft flannel to my cheek.
Then she checked the label like she did on all the clothes she had ordered before we had time to grow into them, as if contemplating whether this was the best time to give the gift. The pajamas looked so small—was he really that little?
“I thought he’d like them,” Mom said as she hugged the pajamas.
“He would have, Mom. You were right.”
“We were going to give him the book and a bike,” Mom explained carefully. “It was perfect.” She opened the book and started to talk about the characters as if they were her friends. “Joel was still too young on his birthday, so Dad and I were going to wait and give him the bike for Christmas. One with training wheels. Maybe we should have given it to him earlier.” She sighed in regret. “It would have been perfect.” Mom picked up the book, turned to a certain page, and began reading about how the man in the yellow hat surprised George.
“‘He took George out to the yard where a big box was standing. George was very curious. Out of the box came a bicycle. George was delighted; that’s what he had always wanted.’” Mom would have gotten an A from Mrs. Clevenger for “Reads with expression.” Mom turned to me. “We were going to put the bike in a big box in the yard.”
“Good idea, Mom.”
Mom hadn’t talked about what would have happened if Joel had lived. When she opened the lid on the hope chest, it le
t something out in both of us.
“I miss him, Momma.”
I hardly ever called her Momma anymore. That was reserved for scraped knees and bee stings.
“Come here, sweetie,” she said, and I sat on her lap. I hardly ever sat on her lap anymore, either. Maybe too big for her lap but never too big to need her.
“When does it get better?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, and so I buried my head in her sweater. We both held on to the pajamas. Those soft, sweet, unworn pajamas no little boy would ever grow into.
“You’re supposed to have better answers than that,” I said gently, without meaning to blame her.
“Just because I’m your mom?” Her eyes glistened.
“I don’t know,” I answered. From the living room I heard “Away in the Manger” from Mom’s favorite Firestone record of Christmas carols sung by Julie Andrews in her British accent. “Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay …” Jesus seemed nearer when I was sitting on Mom’s lap.
Where Does the Butterfly Go When It Rains? was one book choice on my first-grade Scholastic book order. I spent fifty-five cents and four weeks anticipating the answer to the title. But the book never addressed the question; instead it was filled with more, equally frustrating questions. Anybody could write a book of questions; it was the answers that I wanted. Where does the butterfly go when it rains? If the question can’t be answered, does that mean it never finds a home? That book eventually joined the donation box of little-used or outgrown toys.
Matt was not happy about this year’s Christmas pageant. He was too old for the performance, but when you’re a preacher’s kid and the sixth grader who’s playing Melchior has the chicken pox, you have to fill in even when you’re too old. Mom said it was a small role and at least the costumes were interesting. Matt suddenly became spiritual and claimed the kings didn’t arrive at Christ’s birth but perhaps two years later and couldn’t he just wait two years and do it then? Mom didn’t buy it. Matt dreaded everything about it except maybe being onstage with Mary, who was played by Christine Meyers.
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